Naik Media | North West Video Production & Video Editing | Cumbria • Lake District • Lancaster • Carlisle • Preston
Here’s our take on why the Panasonic GH5s beats the GH5 as a main shooter (ignoring the specs!).
The Panasonic GH5s has transformed the belief that micro four third sensors just can’t handle low light scenarios when it comes to video and photography. It’s true that physics limits the abilities of the smaller sensor to gather as much light as a 35mm sensor or even APS-C sensor, however we often hear that it’s all about the size of the pixel that makes the difference when it comes to low-light performance of a camera.
The 10.2MP sensor of the GH5s, while limiting photo resolution, allows Panasonic to increase the size of the photosites and thus allowing better low-light performance. The sensor itself is also physically bigger than the MFT sensor of the GH5 which means that the photosites are probably more than twice the size of the earlier model. The noise reduction is also more advanced.
All this combined makes it a low light monster, which is exactly why we bought one for the business, to supplement our GH5 and allow us to shoot MFT even when the light disappears.
There’s a lot of info on the net about it’s pros and cons, but we’re going to talk about the actual usability of the camera, and the best bits that we’ve discovered through using it on paid jobs:
- Extended battery life – there was a lot of mumbling and muttering online after it was discovered there was no IBIS in the GH5s. I was disappointed too (the GH5 image stabilisation is incredible, especially the IS lock), but I understand why they left it out, and as we tend to shoot on a tripod, it’s not the end of the world. The upside of this change is a significant boost to real time battery life. We shot a solid 5 hours of interviews and Broll without having to swap out the battery, something which would simply not happen with the GH5. There were of course many factors why we achieved this, however, the lack of IBIS means longer battery life!
- Colour accuracy – The GH5 is a very colour accurate camera. Skin tones look great (when using the right LUT) and makes it simple to get great looking footage. The GH5s seems to have actually surpassed this – the colours are brilliant. Eric Naso goes into more detail about the differences (I’d recommend checking out his post on this, it’s geeky but insightful!), but we found them more muted and more toned to skin colours than the GH5. This is huge for the work we do.
- Field of View / Smaller Crop Factor – The sensor is larger than MFT, and the variable aspect ratio means that we’re using as much of the sensor as possible at all times, without having to crop in. This means that the FOV is increased – a 12mm lens is no longer 24mm FF equivalent, but rather it’s closer to a 21mm (if you like cinema like me, this is just brilliant as it’s Spielberg’s favourite focal length, also Tim Burton’s, but never mind that… #geek). This makes it easier to get wide shots with less distortion (we can use a 12mm instead of a 10.5mm – at the widest focal lengths, this is a big difference and the distortion will be greater on the superwide).
This also impacts on…
- Fewer lens changes – okay, so this is touching on what everyone else is talking about low light capability, but it’s something that MFT users just never had: if the light is REALLY low, I find myself leaving the F2.8 lens on the camera and just pushing up to 10,000 iso. That is HUGE! On the GH5 I had to grit my teeth at 1600 iso – now I don’t have to change to a F0,95 lens when the light goes (though when I do, it sees in the dark better than I can – seriously, try 12,800iso at F0.95 – it’s insane). If you’re running and gunning, or simply moving from location to location carrying fewer lenses lets you focus on capturing great footage of the subject, and not worrying about dropping your lens as you change it, rocket-blowing them etc!
- Smaller lenses – similar to the above, an issue with any glass is that if you want to go wide, the lenses get bigger; if you want to go low-light, the lenses get bigger. Combining the GH5s with a 12-60mm F2.8-4 you have a lens capable of shooting 21mm to 213mm when using the extended tele feature in HD (168mm in UHD) in ridiculously low light. To get the same in a GH5 you’d need an F1.4 and a wider lens. These would make it bigger. In practice, the difference between 21mm and 24mm is actually quite large, and the only way to get an F1.4 zoom on your GH5 would be a Sigma F1.8 18-35mm with a speedbooster (still only getting 27mm to 100mm in HD). Look at the size difference and then weigh the two! PS – if anybody is reading this and thinking “video pros only use constant aperture lenses *sniff-sniff*”, I just think “my f4 lens goes up to 11 when I need it to”
Okay, so the downside to using a GH5s is that you must have a tripod, and/or gimbal; but most professional videographers will be doing this anyway even with a GH5, though the Panasonic lens IS is superb.
When it comes down to choosing between the two, the question is: what are your priorities? For us, it’s flexibility and practicality. So we have both the GH5 and GH5s. One for absolute run and gun, the other for regular shooting and low-light. They make perfect B cameras for the other, and using the VLOG lut on both means matching in post (colour etc) will be a breeze. If you had to choose between the two, it comes down to your shooting style, and your needs. If you’re a professional shooter, you should have at least two interchangeable camera bodies for redundancy anyway, so having one of each is a brilliant solution!
Let us know if you found this helpful by commenting below, or even if you have a question about either system.